Another Apple-to-switch-Macs-to-ARM post. "Apple engineers have grown confident that the chip designs used for its mobile devices will one day be powerful enough to run its desktops and laptops, said three people with knowledge of the work, who asked to remain anonymous because the plans are confidential. Apple began using Intel chips for Macs in 2005." No idea when Apple will make the switch, but they will do it. I'm thinking 5-10 year timeframe.

Except ARM releases new CPUs and pushes further ahead and they're ahead of Intel for performance/watt by a massive margin.

Intel is also releasing new processors, and are targeting the low-power areas aggressively.

And, yes, ARM currently beats Atom at performance/watt, but note that there aren't any existing ARM chips where such a comparison would make sense, if you want to compare to i5/i7. There aren't any ARM chips that would be a suitable replacement for the i7 in my laptop. None.

Intel is way closer to having a chip compete with ARM designs in phones than any ARM maker has to competing with Intel on the high end.

Apple switched away from x86 with the Apple TV to ARM and there is literally ZERO incentive to switch from ARM to x86 for the iPad or iPhone.

Apple's switch from x86 to ARM probably had more to do with software than hardware, keeping development of iOS simpler.

Also, I didn't say they would switch to x86 for phones and tablets, only that it was more likely, which I also said wasn't going to happen.